Guinea: Two years after the enforced disappearance of FNDC activists, abductions and disappearances continue with impunity

Guinean authorities must reveal the fate of all victims of abductions and enforced disappearances, including National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (Front national pour la défense de la Constitution – FNDC) activists Oumar Sylla, known as Foniké Mengué, and Mamadou Billo Bah, who were forcibly disappeared two years ago today.

File Photo: FNDC Facebook page

In a joint statement, Amnesty International, the Coordination of Human Rights Organizations (Coordination des Organisations de Défense des Droits de l’Homme – CODDH) of Guinea and the West African Human Rights Defenders Network (WAHRDN) also called for the authorities to ensure those suspected to be responsible for the abductions and enforced disappearances are brought to justice and that the victims and their families obtain truth, justice and reparations.

We reiterate the extreme gravity of the crime of enforced disappearance, which no circumstances, however exceptional, can justify.

“The last two years have been agony for the families of Oumar Sylla and Mamadou Billo Bah. There is no evidence that the Guinean authorities have carried out any investigation to find them although they have announced an investigation. We demand that their fate or whereabouts are revealed, as well as those of all victims of enforced disappearance in Guinea,” the human rights organizations said.

Under international law, the crime of enforced disappearance is the arrest, detention, abduction or any form of deprivation of liberty by State agents, followed by the authorities’ refusal to acknowledge the detention or to reveal the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person.

“We reiterate the extreme gravity of the crime of enforced disappearance, which no circumstances, however exceptional, can justify, and which entails an increased risk of torture, ill-treatment and extrajudicial executions,” said the human rights organizations.

Mamadou Billo Bah and Oumar Sylla were arrested on 9 July 2024 at the latter’s home in Conakry. They were allegedly taken by special forces to the Loos archipelago to be interrogated and tortured, according to a third member of FNDC who was arrested with the two others and released the day after. The authorities have denied holding them.

Mamadou Billo Bah’s wife told Amnesty International: “The children have written a letter to their father for Father’s Day. They say they can hear his voice in the silence. They say how much they miss him, that they are waiting for him, and that life is hard without him.”

The FNDC, a civil society movement, was disbanded in 2022. Oumar Sylla, its national coordinator had called for demonstrations on 11 July 2024 against, among other things, repression of the media and the high cost of living.

The list of abductions and disappearances is getting longer

Numerous journalists, opposition figures and civil society activists, as well as members of their families – including women and children – have been abducted or forcibly disappeared in Guinea.

Armed men targeted exiled artist Elie Kamano’s family on 16 November 2025, abducting five of his relatives, four of whom were minors. The youngest of the five persons abducted has been released. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) subsequently expressed its concerns regarding this alleged enforced disappearance, followed by the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances in May 2026. To this date, their fate or whereabouts remain unknown. In its statement, the OHCHR referred to other alleged cases of enforced disappearance, including that of the former Secretary-General of the Ministry of Mines, Saadou Nimagua, who was abducted on 17 October 2024 and whose fate remains unknown.

We express our deepest concern at the rise in abductions and enforced disappearances, including of children.

Mohamed Traoré, former President of the Guinean Bar Association, has testified that he was subjected to abuse after being abducted from his home on the night of 20 to 21 June 2025 by armed men, and released a few hours later. On 23 June, the public prosecutor announced the opening of an investigation.

On 19 February 2025, the national coordinator of the Forum of Social Forces of Guinea (Forum des forces sociales de Guinée), Abdoul Sacko, was abducted and found the same day, according to his lawyers ‘in a critical state, tortured and abandoned by his abductors in the bush’.

Journalist Habib Marouane Camara, director of Le Révélateur 224 online media, was abducted by men in uniform on 3 December 2024. According to an announcement of an investigation from the Dixinn public prosecutor’s office, an “arrest was carried out without orders from the constituted authorities and outside the cases provided for by law”. The journalist’s family and friends have not heard from him since then.

“We express our deepest concern at the rise in abductions and enforced disappearances, including of children,” said the human rights organizations.

“We call on the Guinean authorities to conduct prompt, independent and transparent investigations into these cases and to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.”

“We also call on them to ratify, without reservation, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and to bring national legislation into line with its provisions. The Guinean authorities committed to this during the fourth cycle of the Universal Periodic Review in August 2025.”